Where Liberalism Is Alive and Well!

I have this fantasy that there are real journalists left in the world of cable news. But just like my other fantasies, they never seem to come true. (Insert Rimshot here)

Glenn Greenwald’s latest piece of “advocacy” journalism deals with events that started in 2002 and ended in 2008. It involves the NSA under President Bush spying on 5 prominent Americans who are Muslim. For the record, at the time the Cheney/Bush administration was selling their lies to the American people, I was marching against their march to war.

What was Glenn Greenwald thinking in 2002, when this spying began. From the preface to one of Glenn’s books, his own words…

I believed that Islamic extremism posed a serious threat to the country, and I wanted an aggressive response from our government. I was ready to stand behind President Bush and I wanted him to exact vengeance on the perpetrators and find ways to decrease the likelihood of future attacks. (emphasis mine)

Think about that for a minute. Greenwald was 36 years old at the time, according to my calculations. Not some young naive kid. Whenever he has tried to refute my pointing that out, he usually says something like, “everyone was doing it.” As my mother would occasionally say, if everyone jumped off a cliff, does that mean you should too?

More from Glenn Greenwald’s own keyboard…

During the following two weeks, my confidence in the Bush administration grew as the president gave a series of serious, substantive, coherent, and eloquent speeches that struck the right balance between aggression and restraint. And I was fully supportive of both the president’s ultimatum to the Taliban and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan when our demands were not met. Well into 2002, the president’s approval ratings remained in the high 60 percent range, or even above 70 percent, and I was among those who strongly approved of his performance. […]

I find myself thinking of this quote from Inigo Montoya in ThePrincess Bride a lot lately. It is overused, I know, but it works so well.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The word I’ve been hearing a lot lately that fits Inigo’s observation is “scandal”.

According to Merriam Webster, the word scandal is defined as

2 : loss of or damage to reputation caused by actual or apparent violation of morality or propriety.

The #1 definition was a religious one.

We’ve all heard the Republicans and their stenographers, the press, say the word “scandal” about a million times in the last couple of months. But do any of these issues really qualify as a “scandal”? I say NO.

July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.

December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaida terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.

March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. (I wonder if Lindsey Graham or Fox News would even recognize the name “David Foy.” This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years on what’s considered American soil.)

September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.

January 12, 2007. Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.

March 18, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Members of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Jihad of Yemen fire a mortar at the U.S. Embassy. The shot misses the embassy, but hits nearby school killing two.

July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.

September 17, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.

I’m racking my brain trying to remember a “scandal” coming from any of these attacks.

The idea that changing “talking points” to not tip off the terrorists responsible for the attacks was some sort of massive conspiracy to make the President look good is just ridiculous. We shouldn’t forget that this “scandal” started with Mitt Romney putting his foot in his mouth during the campaign and since then, the GOP has doubled down on it many times. They were so sure that it was the one thing that could take the President out, if only someone would listen. The real reason that Republicans are trying to create a “scandal” where there is none is because they can’t accept that they got their asses kicked again by President Obama. It’s one giant case of sore-loseritus. The next step is for the Republicans to ask for a “do over” or a “mulligan” on the 2012 elections. Get over it, you lost. And a free tip for you Republicans, Americans don’t like sore losers, you look like fucking weasels.

And remember, the media and the GOP are calling this an “Obama scandal”. First off, there IS no scandal there. There was no violation of “morality or propriety” by anybody, let alone the President. There hasn’t been any connections to the President at all. With the release of the emails that Jon Karl of ABC News was duped about (being generous), that show that the White House let the agencies involved fight over the infamous talking points, this whole issue should be but a bad memory. And my god, they were freaking talking points. Talking points that were prefaced by Susan Rice in the following way.

“Let me tell you the– the best information we have at present. First of all, there’s an FBI investigation which is ongoing. And we look to that investigation to give us the definitive word as to what transpired. But putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is…”

What exactly is so hard to understand about this, unless you just don’t want to understand…then it is understandable. :)

Some respected journalists have been dancing around the issue of whether Republicans are purposely trying to hurt the economy and job growth for political gain. I’m not afraid to say it. It is very obvious that’s exactly what they have been doing since President Obama took office. Sure, they’ve tried to couch their opposition to everything in ideological terms, but anyone with their eyes open wide, knows that they are doing everything they can to try and hurt him, and consequently, the country. ThinkProgress has the facts for us…

From the moment Obama entered office, right-wing conservatives embraced the posture of hell-bent opposition. Recall, in Jan. 2009, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh expressed his hope that Obama fails. One month later, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proudly embraced Limbaugh at a conservative conference. The fringe rhetoric of far right activists had quickly become the de facto governing strategy of the Republican leadership, as they adopted a posture of obstructionism.

Believing that the Republican strategy of opposition has played to his political benefit, McConnell is pledging to do more of the same if Republicans win back the Senate. In an interview with the National Journal’s Major Garrett, McConnell candidly acknowledged that he feels his “single most important” job is to defeat President Obama in 2012:

MCCONNELL: We need to be honest with the public. This election is about them, not us. And we need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, “Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job.”

NATIONAL JOURNAL: What’s the job?

MCCONNELL: The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

And the Republican’s have been doing everything in their power to achieve that end. It started all the way back at the beginning of President Obama’s first term. Even before he took office, Bush administration economists and Obama’s people were having very urgent meetings about preventing a complete collapse of our economy. It was serious shit, very somber. The stimulus plan was devised by all the greatest economists in our country from the right and left. As these serious people were working hard to prevent the next great depression, the clowns in the Republican Party were already starting to play their games with our future. They helped to water down the stimulus package so much that the positive effects were minimal, which made it easier for the GOP to later sell their idea that the stimulus didn’t work. It was clear that they weren’t going to be able to stop the stimulus, so they did the next best thing. Most of the blame for the watering down rests with the spineless Democrats in congress, who let the Republicans push them to right. They bowed to the coordinated attacks from the right and the media and didn’t get a single one of their votes after all the watering down. I can think of another word besides watering.

Of course, almost every economist who is truthful will tell you that the stimulus did work and had it been bigger, it would have worked even better. From USA Today (August 2010) with the title “Economists Agree: Stimulus Created Nearly 3 Million Jobs“…

The White House says the multiyear $814 billion stimulus program passed by Congress in 2009 boosted employment by 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs and raised the nation’s annual economic output by almost $400 billion. A recent study by two prominent economists generally agrees, crediting the pump-priming with averting “what could have been called Great Depression 2.0.”

I remember clearly – the dire predictions, the fainting couches breaking, the screeching of “do something quickly” and “the sky is falling, run for your lives.” And our calm, cool President did what he had to do to stop it, with ABSOLUTELY NO FREAKIN HELP FROM REPUBLICANS. In fact, there was lock-step opposition to it. That is when I knew that the Republicans were serious about sacrificing the economy of the country they call home, for their own political gain. It wasn’t enough that they got the chance to screw up the country for 8 years with their buddy Bush, but they were desperate to complete the destruction of America. And I’m not being hyperbolic either, those scum are anti-American pieces of shit. The next paragraph in that USA Today piece points to how successful the GOP and the media’s twisting worked…

If President Obama expected anyone to say, “Thank you,” however, he’s been disappointed. In a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, 59% of respondents disapproved of the president’s handling of the economy. In the partisan war over the economy’s performance, the word “stimulus” has became synonymous with “boondoggle,” making the notion of a repeat any time soon highly unlikely — especially if Republicans seize control of one or both houses of Congress in November.

Once the weakened stimulus passed, after the Republican’s pulled every trick they could, with the help of the idiot “conservadems”, they immediately started saying how it didn’t work. It started even before most of it was even implemented. The right-wing noise machine and the brain dead media, just pushed the “it didn’t work” meme ad nauseum. They were relentless. And there was very little push back from anyone in the Democratic Party. Some of them seemed to join in the bashing and fell in line with the right-wing media’s bullshit, collapsing like spineless jellyfish. It must be nice to be able to hide amongst fellow wimps, dodging any responsibility (credit) for bills they voted for, but taking that credit when they presented the big checks.

The complicit media just bought into the right-wing memes of the stimulus not working and that the Obama administration “promised” that the unemployment rate would go down to 8.5%. Of course, those projections were based on the information the crooked Bush administration handed them when they walked into office and they were in no way “promises”. They were anything but “promises”, they were cautious forecasts with all sorts of caveats. But what the hell, media, call them promises, that’s what your right-wing overlords like. Must. Please. Bosses. Once the Obama administration had been in a couple of months, they revised those estimates and said the Bush administration projections were off. Did the media pick up on that, of course not. They continue to trumpet the original number, never even mentioning the revisions. That wouldn’t fit with the narrative now, would it?

But of course the Republican opposition to all of President Obama’s policies and particularly the stimulus plan didn’t prevent them from claiming credit in their districts and having pictures taken with the giant checks. Rachel Maddow, our one national treasure in the current media, nails one of them to the wall on Meet the Press…

The DCCC has a Hypocrisy Hall of Fame for all those Republicans claiming credit in their districts while decrying the stimulus out of the other side of their mouths. But hypocrisy is the new norm in the Republican Party and because of it, the American people are desensitized to it now and just accept that all politicians are hypocrites, whether they are or not. It’s part of their scorched earth tactic to bring everyone down into the mud with them so they all look nice and dirty to the people. It will work, but only to a certain extent.

Even though respected journalists are avoiding “going there” with the idea that the GOP is purposely sabotaging our economy, they are hinting at it big time. E.J. Dionnegoes there a little bit with this post…

Welcome to the miserable world of no-way-out politics.

The economy needs another jolt, but Congress is in gridlock. Democrats, or most of them, realize that their political futures and the well-being of millions of households hang on whether unemployment can be brought down. Yet Republicans have the capacity to block even the smallest steps forward.Here’s what the Democrats’ agony looks like from the inside. Last Thursday, Senate Democrats devoted their weekly policy lunch to a simple question: What proposals to spur job-creation have any chance of passing Congress, given Republican control of the House and the effective veto power the GOP has in a Senate where a simple majority no longer rules?

[…]

For the moment, Republicans have no interest in moving the nation’s debate toward investments in job creation because they gain twice over from keeping Washington mired in discussions on the deficit. It’s a brute fact that Republicans benefit if the economy stays sluggish…

I have to say that anyone who hasn’t noticed the Republicans very blatant attempts to stop the President from implementing any policy that would help the economy is simply in denial. They have either put their heads so deep in the sand OR so far up their ass, that they can’t see a damn thing. It’s one or the other, take your pick!

I always loved that line from the movie remake of Dragnet, Dabney Coleman was great in that movie. Republicans never cease to amaze me with their gall and in the last couple of years they exhibit it many times in a day, it seems. It is much easier for them since the Foxification of all cable news outlets has come to fruition. The latest example shows as good as any just how big those balls are. Once again, Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly breaks it down for us.

THE PREDICTABLE RECESS-APPOINTMENT COMPLAINTS…. With the White House announcing six new recess appointments late yesterday, it was only a matter of time before Republicans began complaining. What I was curious to see, however, is what they came up with.

On Wednesday, Obama shed any pretense of bipartisanship in making six recess appointments. As were his previous recess appointments, this batch included two individuals whose records are so controversial that they could not obtain confirmation even with 59 Democratic senators.

According to Benen, and he knows a lot more than I do about this, the “too controversial” sentence is simply a lie. All six of them passed through committees and each was expected to get 60 or more votes for confirmation. So there’s that lie, but oh so much more. That lie is simply a mask that tries to hide the real face of what happened which was summed up by Benen in this excerpt…

Knowing this, conservative Republicans, who’ve engaged in obstructionist tactics unseen in American history, placed anonymous holds on the nominees. They could have simply voted against the nominees and urged their colleagues to follow suit, but that wasn’t good enough — Republicans had to shut down the advise-and-consent process altogether.

[…]

I am intrigued, though, by the notion of “partisanship” as a criticism from a partisan. Let me see if I have this straight — when Republicans engage in obstructionism, breaking down the confirmation process, that’s fine. When the president exercises the power available to him to circumvent this obstructionism, that’s “shedding any pretense of bipartisanship”?

It’s almost as if Obama is allowed to be affected by institutional abuses, but he’s not allowed to respond. There’s nothing wrong with political pugilism, just so long as Obama realizes he’s not supposed to punch back.

That’s quite a standard.

I remember a day when the media (not including opinion pages) was a check on such hypocrisy and in some ways, prevented this kind of tactic from either party because of it. These days, the media is complicit in the charade with no shame. For the most part, they just parrot the GOP talking points which at Fox News come in the way of daily memos. The other media outlets have just been infiltrated by people like David Gregory, who when confronted with blatant lies, just lets them float around out there with no challenge. And remember, Meet the Press is supposed to be legitimate journalism, fair and balanced…cough, spit, choke. I actually miss Tim Russert, who at least did his homework and did challenge people when they showed up with a silver plate of bullshit.

I’m not exactly hopeful that the corporate media is going to change anytime soon. They clearly benefit from Republican rule in many ways. And when I hear folks on the right talk about the liberal media I can’t help but think of Dabney Coleman saying…

O’DONNELL: I dabbled into witchcraft, I never joined a coven. But I did. I did. […]

I didn’t join a coven. I didn’t join a coven, let’s get this straight. […]

But that’s exactly why…because… because I dabbled in witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. […]

One of my first dates was with a witch was on a satanic altar and I didn’t know it and there was a little blood there and stuff like that. […]

We went to a movie and then like had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.

This is just too funny, I’m sure a lot of heads will explode when and “if” this gets in the main stream media. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ignored it, but I don’t know how they can. The sentence where she says “I dabbled in witchcraft” will surely show up in a television ad. It will be kind of fun seeing the right-wing deal with this, hypocrisy in its raw form will be all over the television. I wonder what Karl Rove will have to say about this, or have the rest of the party circled him and told him to STFU. Funny stuff.

Why do some people take actions that go against their own self interests? It happens on the left and the right, a lot of the time it can be put in the hypocrisy column and other times it seems to be caused by some emotional reason that is overriding that person or organizations own goals and beliefs. Some of the folks over at Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher, Jon Walker, Emptywheel, David Dayan and others, seem to contort their own beliefs to justify their opposition to the health care bill. They are using very similar tactics as Republicans like using trite phrases, narrow interpretations, denial, suppositions that are false, clinging to old talking points that are no longer true, vilifying people and corporations unfairly and using that vilification to help bolster their flimsy reasoning and narrow agenda.

The biggest example of this is watching the “Hamsher Gang” talk as if we live in a socialist country all of a sudden. They talk from a premise that suggests that democrats somehow have 60 very liberal, progressive votes in the Senate. There is major denial going on in their camp about what is possible with the current makeup of the House and Senate. They expect President Obama to dictate to the congress single payer health care or at the least the public option as if all he has to do is say “you must do this now, I am King Obama.” Well, that ain’t how it works folks. I’ve visited FDL on occasion to try and figure out what their thinking is and have found in the comments section mostly right wing people who simply attack the President personally, attribute ideas and thoughts to him much like the tea partiers do, based in suspicion, rumors, hatred for Rahm Emmanuel and the president and basically no engagement on the issues at all. Sure there are some who are liberal or progressive who have chosen one anti corporation mentality that guides everything they think. When you challenge them on any point, they throw out the fact that insurance companies will make money off having more people covered. No acknowledgment that those people covered might actually get health care, they only focus on the potential money the insurance companies might make due to an increase in people covered.

I’m not a fan of big corporations that have gotten away with all sorts of things during the Bush/Cheney and to some extent the Clinton/Gore administrations, but I’m not one who thinks they are inherently evil, they are driven by profit in a capitalistic society…uh, it’s been that way for quite a while in this country. Did these folks just wake up from a lifelong dream of living in a socialist country. Did they just now realize that we are a capitalist country? Our country isn’t going socialist anytime soon, get over it people. I personally wish we were more socialistic, a delicate balance between being profit driven and exacting controls on them that protect the public. This balance was tilted far to the right during the W years and needs to be tilted back very quickly. Regulations need to be enforced, they are there for a reason.

I was challenged at FDL with a series of questions that asked about liberal principles and I answered them as I would, very liberally. I was then asked if Obama were to do the opposite of one of my answers, phrasing it as “throwing me under the bus”, and I realized that they are admitting that they are choosing one principle and holding firm to it. Now that idea isn’t necessarily bad, but when sticking to that principle causes you to lose all sense of perspective, all views of the bigger picture and the overall goal of a progressive movement, then it becomes self serving and really just plain stupid. When people can actually type “oh, the old people will die argument” and poo poo it as if people dying isn’t important. Now that is when I know that sticking to that principal has made them go off the rails.

The latest pack of lies that the Republicans and their minions are pushing is about the procedure that is rumored to be under consideration for passing the health care bill. The Wall Street Journal led the charge with their lies and misinterpretations. One of the lies going around is that Democrats are avoiding voting on the bill. From Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic…

In fact, they ARE taking an up or down vote on the Senate health care bill. They’re just doing it AT THE SAME TIME as they’re passing the reconciliation language, which countermands several controversial provisions. That is: House Democrats still have to vote for the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback,” and the “Gator Aid” provisions, but they’re going to do so while simultaneously passing the reconciliation fix that removes them. The two bills will essentially be merged into one vote.

It’s a procedure that’s been used many times by both parties, once again the Republicans have selective amnesia and the media just plays along with it for the most part. Norm Ornstein sums up their tactics pretty good…

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld).

Did you catch the fact that Republicans used it 35 times between 2005 and 2006, it worked well for them, heh. That liberal bastion, The Washington Post, cough….even weighed in on the misinformation with a blazing headline. Here is an excerpt from a story in the New Republic.

But the way that some journalists are describing it, you’d think the House Democrats were willing a bill into law by magic. “House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it,” blared a Washington Post headline. The Post’s only explanation of the tactic came from Nancy Pelosi, who said, “It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know.”

The one and only proud father Booman has a most excellent analogy for the situation, go read his blog if you haven’t already. From his post….

Tell me if you’ve ever faced the following situation. You want to carry two things upstairs. You are holding one, but because of the awkward shape of the second item you can’t pick it up without putting the first item down. In other words, you picked these two items up in the wrong order and you have to start over by picking the second item up first and then the first item after that. Has that ever happen to you?That’s the basic situation that the Democrats in the House are facing with the health care bill. They want to just vote on the reconciliation part of the bill because it doesn’t include the crappy stuff that is in the Senate bill. In fact, the reconciliation bill explicitly eliminates the crappy stuff in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, they have to carry both bills up the stairs and they can’t carry the reconciliation bill until they have first picked up the more awkward Senate bill.

I can’t believe how juvenile the Republican leadership has been, or maybe they really have no leadership and the fools are running the ship.

They are almost parodies of themselves, they lie unabashedly even though we can “roll tape” and expose their lies. They then just ignore the response and continue to lie, the media plays along, calls it an opposing view or something. They keep on lying….someone takes a poll to find out how well the lie worked. Bingo, the idiots are answering their phones for the pollsters and spewing forth the lies they heard Rush, Glenn, Bill O., and basically the whole cast of Fox News and the right wing radio cesspool spew forth.

I just came across this story that says that the Senate democrats will pass health care reform within the next 60 days. They will do it by using budget reconciliation to pass a series of fixes to the bill they passed in November. I’m still skeptical whether it can really happen, given so many loopholes in the rules in congress, but it’s great to hear that they are at least considering doing it. I think the democrats are screwed in 2010 if they don’t pass something. From The Hill…

“We’ll do a relatively small bill to take care of what we’ve already done,” Reid said, affirming that Democrats would use the reconciliation process. “We’re going to have that done in the next 60 days.”

The move would allow Democrats to essentially go it alone on health reform, especially after losing their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate after Sen. Scott Brown’s (R) special election victory in Massachusetts.

Of course the Republicans are crying fool play, which just cracks me up. They think it is a “hyperpartisan” move to ram through the bill. Now I guess using a 41% “majority” to stop EVERYTHING including low level appointees….well, that wouldn’t be hyperpartisan, would it? This is the height of hypocrisy. They also are saying that this really makes the bipartisan health care summit moot, and of course what have they been saying since the summit was planned? More hypocrisy for you from the party of No!

Speaking of hypocrisy, Jane Hamsher and her Firedoglake brigade are showing us once again, that hypocrisy isn’t just a conservative thing. These so-called progressives are fighting the president not just on healthcare, but many other things. I read a post from Jane herself where she scoffs at the public option coming back, makes several snarky comments, the usual crap she and her gang trot out. Here is a particularly snarky comment from Janey…

The last of the rationalizations for ditching the public option have been peeled off the pundit apologists, who now stand naked and exposed atop their piles of selectively chosen factoids and statistics. (And therein lies the danger of laundering “tips” fed to you by “anonymous sources” who keep their hands clean while you affix your name — you ultimately have to own it.)

Her posts are always stream of consciousness rants, that often make no sense not just because of the lack of support, but for the confusing wording. But she does throw in her buzzwords periodically as red meat to the brainwashed supporters she has tapped into. I wonder what exactly she means by “selectively chosen factoids and statistics”? Would that be oh, pre-existing conditions, not being able to drop peoples coverage, expansion of child health care, community clinics, children being able to stay on their parents insurance till age 26, subsidies for poor people? Are these the “factoids” she is demeaning? What a complete absence of compassion for those who would benefit from any versions of the bill.

In another segment of her rant, she says this…

But the bottom line is that the health care bill that the White House drafted, the one they pushed through the Senate, the only one they ever wanted, is dead. There is not enough graft and payola in the world to get the Blue Dogs to line up for Martha Coakley duty.

Now, I could go and weed through all her previous bullshit posts and find where she criticized the president for letting the congress write the bill. They railed against Obama for not writing the bill, but now that the congress has made the sausage, she wants to put it all in Obama’s lap. It’s only recently that the White House has tried to pull together all sides in the debate and this is because they didn’t want the repeat of Hillarycare, which was criticized for not including the congress in the process. Remember? So her above statement is pure propoganda, she’s trying to appeal to those teabaggers she has been reaching out to and apparently lying is her best tactic. It’s pretty sad, really. The Martha Coakley comment to me reads like she is dancing on her grave, a democrat. Her gang was part of the chorus trying to spin the loss in Massachusetts as a referendum on Obama, another democrat. Hmmmm, what’s wrong with this picture.

If you haven’t seen this clip with Chris Hayes from the Nation making an appearance on Morning Joke by Corporate Coffee, check it out. I don’t think Chris will be asked back anytime soon, he didn’t fit with their narrative. He was awesome. And to get my Arianna Huffington stab in, Mort Zuckerman is also on the panel who was dating Arianna recently. He’s one of the Obama haters who Joe loves to have on to help him bash the president. He’s a supposed liberal, yeah right. Watch how he sides with the right wing on the rule of law, he seems to bend his ideology when it means he can bash Obama.

This clip shows the mentality of the Grand Old Party, like when I was 8 years old and saying the opposite of everything my older brother said. It was a fun game for me because it drove my brother nuts. I don’t think that grown women and men really should be playing this game with the future of our country, no matter how much fun the adolescent Republicans are having. After all, only adults can vote.

The duo who loves to go on Morning Joe and feed Joe the beast with insider political gossip are all the rage these days with their new book Game Change. It looks like many in the media are eating it up and spitting it back out. Liz Cheney is appauled at Harry Reid using the word Negro, I’m sure it comes from her deep seated hatred of racism in general, it has to be. I’m not really surprised by what is attributed to Harry Reid, doesn’t surprise me at all. Of course President Obama is going to forgive him for his insensitive comments, that’s our president’s style after all. What fascinates me the most about this particular issue is the reaction from Republicans, it raises that question I think needs to be applied to many issues the media trumpets, “so what?” I wonder what is behind their pushing of this story, is it to show that democrats are racist too, so it’s OK for republicans to be racist?

There are many other comments by others including Bill Clinton that will get a lot of traction too, specifically racially tinged comments when talking to Ted Kennedy. The media is going to pound these stories to death, I just know it. But I want someone to ask “so what?” They will put this all out there to linger, but won’t ever tell us why it is important that we know it. I think all sides of the issues need to stop and think about why they are pushing the story, what difference does it make, why should we care? I guess for those who think we’ve transcended race, it will be a reminder that we haven’t and for those who are racist, they can take comfort in knowing they aren’t the only ones…..see, those liberals are racist too.

Let the republican hypocrisy begin. There is already pushback against the book, which sounds more like a gossip rag than an actual book. Check out these posts on the subject.

I used to be a very loyal Huffington Post reader, it was my home page on all 3 of my computers. I loved how they bashed Bush and Co. I only go over there now to check how the progress is going on them switching to being a conservative blog. I was eating dinner and I pulled out my iPhone, (yes, I’m one of them) and I pulled up my HuffPost app and this screaming headline said “Dems’ Only Hope for 2010: Make The Race About The Other Guy.”

I started reading it, of course, and came across this in the first paragraph…

Voters are shifting to the right; white antipathy to the President has intensified; the popular consensus backing Obama and his agenda has collapsed in less than a year…

Really? Go look at this post at Public Policy Polling that says just the opposite, his numbers remain strong, regardless of people not liking what the senate passed on health care reform. And of course, congress always polls low and even within the article on HP, they say republicans numbers are also slipping, but they wouldn’t let some facts get in the way of their agenda to portray President Obama and the democratic party negatively. Continue reading →

Having been pissed off so much by Jane Hamsher and her thugs at FireDogLake, I went to Google and typed in her name. Woe, in about 5 minutes I learned an awful lot about her that now makes other things clearer to me. She was one of the producers of Oliver Stone’s film “Natural Born Killers” and even wrote a book about her experience on that film. It was financed by Time Warner, hmmmm, is that a corporation? I thought Jane was against those big corporations, but apparently not when they are paying her. Now that was a movie I would never go see, I hate violence in all forms and I think Hollywood has been sensationalizing it and making it cool by presenting it in a hip, fast paced way that appeals to impressionable “yutes.” Check out this link that talks about how the film was directly related to at leat 8 murders.

My fishing around on Google also turned up another link, here it is, that talks about other lovely things she’s done over the years, including the race-baiting photo of Clinton with Joe Lieberman during the primaries in Connecticut. Now I am no fan of Lieberman’s by any means, but this event does show the type of person she truly is. Hmmmmm, I’ll have to click a few more links on google and let you know what else I find about this person who seems to be showing up on my Teevee way too much.

Who The Hell Am I!

I’m a liberal that is extreme in some ways and not in others. I support President Obama and make no apologies for it. I think he has done a phenomenal job, especially when you consider that he inherited a huge mess and has faced unprecedented opposition from a lazy & desperate Republican Party. I’m a film producer/director/editor, adjunct professor, technician, media critic and photographer when I’m not reading left wing blogs and typing on this one. – On Twitter @ExtremeLiberal or Email at liberalforreal (at) gmail.com

Own An Important Part Of American History!

Cicely Tyson narrates this award winning documentary that tells the story of African American migration from the old south to the prosperous north. Winner of 5 Awards including "Best Film" at the Astoria International Film Festival, the "Paul Robeson Award" at the Newark Black Film Festival and "Best Film Relating To The Black Experience" at the XXV International Black Cinema Berlin/Germany!